Introduction If you are currently starting to read this review ), you are likely to be of an age and interest group that lived through a childhood dominated by some incredible feats of mankind and science (or so our Avsim FS user survey has told us). This was a period when we reached out beyond the home planet and dared to explore where the human race has only dreamed of since the dawn of time. Almost all of those epic voyages started from one place, Cape Canaveral (or Cape Kennedy as it was known at the height of its fame), the gateway to space! When I first heard of this project, it seemed to be a great chance to at last pay a visit to this magical place, if only in virtual reality. The advertised specifications also fitted my criteria for a new “home base”, so what could be better! After all these years of virtual test flying, I could also join NASA! When looking for new add-on scenery to make as my “home base”, I look for several things…..detail (but not at the expense of frame rates), photo-real textures and autogen combined (ideally) and a runway capable of allowing me a full range of FS aircraft in my hangar. That last point rules out classics such as Emma Field. The frame rate problem can also limit many of the latest complex airport sceneries such as the OSS London Gatwick (a work of great detail and accuracy), that would kill my “mid-range” PC in FS2004. For over a year, I have been flying from St. Malo (LFRD), a freeware scenery in Northern France. This offers all of the above features, with the added bonus of being free. Any comparisons I make in this review will use St. Malo as a yard stick. Installation and Documentation As is normal with modern quality payware, installation is almost painless! The potential problems of installing normally centre around passwords and authorization codes. I encountered no such problems on my set up and was installing within seconds of the 30 Mb download completing. The entire installed scenery will consume a whopping 300 Mb of your hard disc, so those who are short of space may have to think long and hard before purchasing this product. The manual comes in the now standard PDF format and runs to 57 pages. This includes a good selection of approach charts and airport information. If you are like me, print all this out on paper before going on any further! In the manual you are advised that this scenery will look better with the addition of some of the freeware water enhancement textures available. This is true, but it would have been nice to see these actually included. Some of these water enhancements require complex file replacements within FS2004, which I know some people are reluctant to get involved in.
A statement that “the scenery includes items that are freely available”, also surprised me. Aerosoft did mention that these object designers will receive a free copy of this add-on, as a way of saying thanks. What surprised me more was the realization that most of the spaceport buildings in Cape Canaveral 2005 were in fact the default Microsoft buildings! The developers go on to say that these were “so good”, they decided not to replace them. At this stage, I thought I had better see for myself just what 300 Mb of (partially default) scenery was going to look like!
First Impressions What you get with this package is three enhanced airports and a large area of photographic quality textures. The smallest airport is Merritt Island (KCOI), which a rather small industrial airport really only suitable for light twins, at most. To counter that rather small size of runway, you also get the Shuttle Landing Strip (KTTS) which has an incredible 15,000 feet of useable tarmac! Also featured is the Cape Canaveral AFS Skid Strip which has a very useable 10,000 foot runway. All associated nav-aids seem to be active. To help you explore your new home, Aerosoft has also included a stripped down version of their popular Piper Cub. This version is only available in an amphibious form, but looking at the geography of the Cape, that is the version to have! I will not go into details of the Piper Cub, except to say it is a nice top quality addition, but not my “cup of tea”. After a painless automatic installation I fired up FS2004 and went to my scenery/add-on menu and….nothing new! This seems to be a growing trend nowadays, you install your scenery (re-boot FS2004 if required), go back to create a flight with your new addition and it does not appear on the scenery menu. You then have to search for the name and/or town to find it! What did appear, were some Aerosoft flights in the “select a flight” menu. Unfortunately, they all feature “interesting weather” of some kind or another and always use the Piper Cub. Oh well! It is only a matter of a minute or so to set up a new “default flight”, so I chose the middle ground and selected the AFS Skid Strip on a nice clear summer’s day. What you see at first is rather disappointing, a somewhat default looking view with a lot of trees lining the runway and some default autogen buildings. At first I thought that the installer had not functioned correctly, it was then I noticed something. Looming over the trees (a lot more trees than on the default scenery) were the tops of some unmistakable structures…launch gantries! It was
time to show the locals a real “space cowboy“ is
in town, I select the FSD NASA T-38 from my aircraft menu and prepare to boogie!
A Closer Look The first thing that struck me once airborne was just how vast the launch complex was. Even at 3,000 ft some launch facilities were mere dots on the horizon. The next thing was how flat…and marshy it all is! Now I know from history when you build something a little dangerous, such as a nuclear power station or rocket test site, you do not build it in a steep sided valley surrounded by cities! But Cape Canaveral is big, flat and empty on a truly major scale. What is good for the rocket scientist is not always good for the scenery designer. Aerosoft have done a very good job of getting this photo scenery into FS2004. I particularly like the way the coastline and lagoons are done. However, like an artist with a limited pallet, you cannot make a flat salt marsh look anything other than what it is….rather flat and dull!
For a second I forgot my reason for visiting this place, the “Space Connection”. Aerosoft have indeed enhanced the default scenery, usually by adding some rather industrial type buildings here and there. You will find a rather tired looking shuttle being attended to at the Shuttle landing site and a collection of figures and vehicles dotted around. To see what the scenery looked like at ground level, I hopped into one of Bill Lyon’s Fords that he often includes with his aircraft packages (Now Freeware), for a quick ground-level spin. It was while driving around I stumbled across a rather strange sight, an odd collection of half size miniature tow trucks and fire tenders! Either NASA has a serious model car club at the Cape, or the developers have got their scale a little wrong in places. Stay off the deck, in an aircraft (as intended) and you will never notice it. You may notice that I paid little attention to the speed limits!
The default Saturn V assembly hall and shuttle pads look much better with the additional trees and new ground textures, you get a better feeling of really being there. The usual “blurry” textures sometimes occur, but only if you fly too fast! This is a FS2004 fault, often improved with a better graphics card. Frame rates were acceptable on my PC, although on final approach into all three runways I occasionally dropped down to 10FPS when I usually get 17FPS with the default Cape Canaveral. This was the price to pay for all those trees alongside the runways! Flying around in general sightseeing mode, I was getting a good 17 FPS with no stutters. When flying at St Malo, I have a much more detailed airport along with custom autogen and hills, all without any drop in frame rates.
The southern end of the Cape is full of typical “box” type housing and small factory units. A harbour, populated with cruise ships makes an interesting diversion too. All the time you are flying (with good visibility), just across the water is the rest of Florida in default MS mode. This does not detract from the photo scenery and in fact makes you realize, despite being a marsh, it is much more interesting than default MS scenery. I would have loved a special effect like a shuttle launch or landing to have been included in this package. To my knowledge there are no ground animations at all.
Conclusions So, will I pack up my garlic press and baguette and quit flying in France for the “final frontier” of Southern Florida? In a simple (French) word NON! Cape Canaveral 2005 has been rather like many summer vacations, it was very interesting and great fun to visit, but there is no place like home. True I cannot fly B-52’s or land Shuttles at St Malo, but the little French airport looks better (to my eyes) and even has more detailed eye candy than these enhanced Florida airports. Many of you will love the Cape, the scenery may not be the very best add-on scenery available, but it offers simmers a great range of Airports in a relatively small area, all linked with some well done photo-real scenery textures. You also get better weather than in Northern France ….unless you let Aerosoft chose the forecast for you! |
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